Unreal Engine 4.15 has been released by Epic Games, which officially adds support for Nintendo’s upcoming new platform, the Nintendo Switch.

　　The update allows developers to develop for the Nintendo Switch “as experimental as part of the platform improvement”. Epic Games writes that Switch support is considered experimental for now, but the developer aims to offer support “in a shippable state” with the next engine release.

　　Epic Games’ game engine it’s new to Nintendo, but official Switch support implies that we should see some Unreal Engine 4 games on Nintendo’s new platform in the near future.

　　Aside from Epic Games partnering with Nintendo to offer Switch support, the update offers “significant gains in overall stability, enhancements to developer workflows, and improvements to runtime performance resulting in greater efficiency during development and superior end user experiences after release”.

　　Unreal Engine 4.15 includes significant gains in overall stability, enhancements to developer workflows, and improvements to runtime performance resulting in greater efficiency during development and superior end user experiences after release.

　　Compile times for programmers are drastically reduced - by as much as 50%! Reloading content while Unreal Editor is running, Reroute nodes in Materials, a new Blendspace Editor, new mathematics Blueprint nodes, and more contribute to an even more streamlined development process in this release.

　　For those looking to squeeze out every drop of performance, Cooking Blueprints to C++ native code is no longer an experimental feature, the Texture Streaming system has gotten an overhaul, and Alternate Frame Rendering with NVIDIA SLI gives a boost on high end systems.

　　The Cinematics and Animation pipelines continue to strengthen with Animation blending now possible in Sequencer, linking Animation Curves to bones for culling in LODs, and modifying curves in Animation Blueprints with the Modify Curve node. Level Sequences can now be embedded in Actor Blueprints, and early support for Level Sequence Components is available for early adopters.

　　Developing for Nintendo Switch is available as experimental as part of the platform improvements. GPS data is now accessible on iOS and Android using the new Location Services. Also on iOS, streaming audio and remote notifications are fully supported. Monoscopic Far Field Rendering is an option for mobile VR platforms, HDR display output is available in an experimental state, and the ability to use Playstation VR Aim Controllers is also added.

　　You can check out the full release notes for Unreal Engine 4.15 right here.

　　The Nintendo Switch is scheduled for a global release next month on March 3, 2017.